


Strangers When We Meet

by azn-jack-fiend (ajf)



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Backstory, Backstory: Jack Harkness, F/M, Gen, Historical, Mystery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-09
Updated: 2011-02-09
Packaged: 2017-10-15 13:30:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 15,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/161271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ajf/pseuds/azn-jack-fiend
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's 1999, and Jack is back in Estelle's life as his own son. Something waiting inside the mind of her friend at the nursing home has finally stopped waiting, and Jack's attempts to protect Estelle will reveal painful secrets kept buried for decades.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Garden

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](http://aeshna-uk.livejournal.com/profile)[**aeshna_uk**](http://aeshna-uk.livejournal.com/). Many thanks to betas [](http://canaana.livejournal.com/profile)[**canaana**](http://canaana.livejournal.com/) and [](http://heddychaa.livejournal.com/profile)[**heddychaa**](http://heddychaa.livejournal.com/).
> 
> Specific violence-related warnings for later chapters: [see here.](http://azn-jack-fiend.livejournal.com/74572.html)

Jack paused behind the screen of pale purple foxgloves.

Their heavy, ruffle-throated blooms reached shoulder-high. Soon they'd go to seed. Leave the last dead stalk on the ground and new ones would spring up the first year, die back to the ground in winter, resurrect and flower the second year. Then die again for good. Not that he'd ever been much of a gardener. The foxglove life-cycle was just one of many charmingly useless facts he'd picked up and never bothered to put down. No need to remember, no desire to forget.

He should use this pause to paper over holes in the story of his life. To rehearse deflections, and jokes, and questions in answer to questions. But this was the third time, and it only got easier. The easiest con he'd ever pulled, maybe.

"Jack, is that you?" called Estelle.

"I'm standing here admiring your foxgloves," he said, loud and cheerful and thankful he didn't have to fake that, at least.

"Aren't they fabulous? Come around the left, dear."

He made his cautious way around the towering bank, holding the edges of his coat to keep from bruising any of the smaller flowers around the base. The garden was overgrown, informal, stunningly fertile. Underneath the syrupy smell of living flowers curled the faint medicine smell of dead leaves soaked in sun and rain.

And there she was, sitting on a picnic cloth with a cane by her side. Almost no pain this time, just a little twinge of double vision resolving itself. The gap of fifty-five years closed. She was still beautiful, after all.

She gave him a radiant smile.

Jack shrugged off his coat and threw it down next to her. He sat down and took her hand, small in his own, delicate and speckled and fragile.

"Love your garden! It's like another world back here. I'd say a hundred years ago, but I don't think you're going for that effect."

"Oh no, the designs back then were rather stuffy," said Estelle. "I want my flowers to be free to grow into their natural selves. They need room for improvisation," and she swept her hand like a conductor, "and chaos in their short lives. I have a wonderful book of photography on — but I mustn't be rude. Let me introduce you to my other visitors."

Jack looked up at the two women. He'd been hoping to sit down in the sun and just exchange big goofy grins with Estelle for the next hour, but if she wanted to socialise, he'd socialise.

"Myrna? This is Jack, the young man I told you all about. We connected through the world-wide Internet. Isn't it wonderful how it brings everyone closer together?"

"Hello, Jack," said Myrna, sounding very self-possessed and crisply English. Her hair was silver-white, but premature, or dyed, as she was obviously a generation younger than Estelle. She had dark brown eyes and ferocious cheekbones and interesting lines under an interesting sleeveless wrap dress.

He started to rise up to shake her hand, but she was already lowering herself to sit by Estelle's other side.

"Our friend in the wheelchair is Pinkie," said Myrna. "She's not at her most lucid right now, I'm afraid."

"Hiya, Pinkie," said Jack, smiling and waving and realising that eye contact would be a lost cause: Pinkie's milky blue eyes stayed fixed to empty air somewhere above the bank of flowers.

"So how do you lovely ladies know each other? I'm sure Estelle told you about my father."

"We all did a lot of anti-nuclear activism in the sixties," said Myrna. "Pinkie and I joined a sort of commune later. That whole episode turned into quite the disaster, but we stayed in touch, even after I left for India. I live in Canada now, but I'm in Cardiff for a few weeks visiting relatives and friends."

"Were you a hippie, Estelle?" asked Jack, teasing. "It wouldn't surprise me."

"Well, I wasn't running around barefoot smoking dope, if _that's_ what you mean," she replied with mock indignation. "But I wouldn't be ashamed of the word either. The younger people had such a passion to change the world then."

" _I_ was the barefoot dope-smoker," confessed Myrna. "Estelle and Pinkie were the ladies in sensible shoes who actually got the work done."

"If it's worse, it's a sign it's nearly over," said Pinkie in thick, throaty Cockney. "So cheer up, Captain, and buy a flower off a poor girl."

"What?" snapped Jack, completely thrown.

"It's Pygmalion!" said Estelle, delighted. "She's speaking from Pygmalion. Oh, I wish I knew the next line. She's been speaking more and more lately. Do you have a coin in your pocket, Jack?"

Jack rose to his feet and found a penny for Pinkie. Her lost, mad eyes fully met his own as she reached out and took the penny from his hand.

"Can you help me get off-planet?" she asked, in the calm voice of a middle-class eighty-year-old Welshwoman.

"Maybe," said Jack. "Where're you headed?"

She was gone again, staring at the foxgloves. The coin slid from her fingers onto the grass. Jack picked it up and sat back down next to Estelle. He'd felt a surge of annoyance at how the weirdness of his life _never fucking let up not even for a lunch break goddamnit_ before Estelle's steady smile swung him right back into a state of blissful serenity.

"I don't think that was from one of her plays," said Myrna. "And I've heard it before. Questions about escaping. Science fiction sorts of things."

"We're worried about Pinkie," said Estelle. "Jack used to be a soldier, like his father, but now he's a private detective." She turned to him, touched his hand. "Can you look into her nursing home? Perhaps they're _doing_ something there that's making her want to escape. I read a story about a place in Sussex, but it's too horrible to even repeat. If it's anything like that..."

"What do her relatives think?" he asked.

"She hasn't any left except for a nephew in Glasgow. She's like me. She never had any children."

"Sure. I'll do what I can," said Jack, raising an eyebrow and grinning, crooked and noir-style. "But my services don't come cheap."

"You wouldn't!" gasped Estelle.

"At least two scones up front. And the next time I visit, I'm demanding banana bread."

"That's awfully cheeky of you, but I suppose it's fair. Agreed! Let's go inside, dears."

Jack helped Estelle to her feet while Myrna rose gracefully and took hold of Pinkie's wheelchair.

"We've been watching some AbFab tapes on the telly," she said. "Estelle hardly watches _anything_ , but I've got her addicted. You can imagine the appeal for us."

Estelle nudged Jack's ribs with her elbow. "Patsy used to go out with Keith Moon," she stage-whispered.

Myrna cocked one slim hip to the side, squinted, and rakishly brandished an invisible cigarette. "Sort of," she drawled. "Woke up underneath him in a hotel bedroom, once."

He walked with them, laughing, down the garden path.


	2. The Home

_The cold wind rushed down the hill, struck off the last leaves of the copper beeches to fly circling down around them in brilliant blazing spiky spirals. Jack laughed at the glory of the leaves even as he rubbed his stinging eyes, but when he turned to find Estelle, dancing as he knew she would be — she was poised still and stretched and pointing to the sky like a music-box ballerina with the key unturned. Pointing to the bombers over Cardiff._

~~~

Jack strolled into the Wellcross Care Home waiting room and made a quick survey of the aggressively upholstered environs. They'd renovated the place since the last time he'd visited, replaced the offensive mustard-coloured carpet with a slightly less offensive minty green. Plenty of natural light, and the smell of potpourri and industrial soap wasn't _too_ overpowering. There were worse places to hang around waiting to die. He had a list.

And Pinkie wouldn't be the first low-key alien or time traveller to end their journey in a Wellcross bed, beached by the Rift. The more pragmatic ones eventually moved away from Cardiff, but some of them clung, hoping that they'd be swept back again, as if the same wave ever rolled to shore twice.

The attendant behind the counter, a smiling woman in a pink cardigan, looked at him expectantly.

He matched her smile and amped it up a notch. "Good morning! Nice-looking place you've got here. Comfy. I wouldn't mind checking in myself. What's the rate on a double?"

She laughed more than the joke deserved, and they were off to a fine start. Five minutes later and he had a special visitor's pass and an orderly leading him to the day room where Mrs. Geraldine "Pinkie" Wiggens was currently signed up for "free time".

She sat, sunk back like a sick child, in a dignified armchair by the artificial fireplace, blue eyes and lacy blue dress and clean-smelling limp grey hair braided loosely behind her. She looked a little restless, smoothing the crinkles of the magazine spread over her lap.

"Hello again, Pinkie," he said, sitting down so that he was looking up at her. He took care to move his body slowly, with no hint of threat. "My name is Captain Jack Harkness. I'm not from around here either. Like I said earlier, maybe I can help. Where did you come from? And where do you want to go?"

No reaction. He just wasn't showing up on her radar. And the magazine was upside down.

He took the Bekaran scanner from his pocket and pointed it toward her head. Anyone watching would probably think it was some kind of PDA.

He would've bet 27th century for Pinkie's home time. Post-FTL, pre-Alzheimer's gene therapy inoculation campaign, and that left a neat, narrow window. He'd have lost: the scanner showed her gene pattern as 100% garden-variety 20th-century human.

The brain scan showed abnormal. But he had no clue how to read the symptoms of a disease that had died out millennia before he was born. Maybe it was normal for her condition. Worst case scenario, she had something else living in her brain. Something potentially dangerous that he didn't want anywhere, _anywhere_ near Estelle.

"I'll be right back," he told Pinkie, and went to find the manager.

The office was down a hall lined with paintings of sailing ships and monkeys dressed like bellhops. Jack ran over his story once (an old friend of the Wiggenses), knocked on the door, pushed in as soon as heard a response.

The ginger-haired man with the pencil-thin moustache started like a rabbit. A pen flew from his jerky fingers and clattered against the filing cabinet to his side.

Jack's reflexes screamed _blowfish_. A century of run-ins and even the most drug-addled ones knew him by sight. Some of them used perception filter technology for long cons.

He squashed down the very strong urge to shove his gun in the face of whatever it was.

"Hey there! Why so nervous?" he asked. With a smile on his face, of course. He kept his right hand close to his gun, using his left to key in a sequence on the Bekaran scanner.

"Nervous? Me? No. Well, you know. I didn't... _gah_."

"I'd like to check out Mrs. Wiggens for a medical appointment, that's all. I guess I'll need a wheelchair."

"Oh, um." The manager took a deep breath of relief. Interesting. "There's only two people with filed authorisation. Fred Wiggens, that's her nephew —"

"Good old Freddie!"

"— And Mrs. Myrna Covington-Wong. I'd need to start the authorization process on you, Mr...."

"Smith, Jack Smith. Tell you what, that sounds like it could take a while. So I'll just give Myrna a call."

"The lady at the front desk can assist you with a wheelchair checkout form." Formal now, hands folded in front of him.

"Thanks a lot. See ya!"

Just as Jack closed the door, he saw a quick shudder pass through the man.

And the Bekaran scanner results showed yet another bog-standard 20th-century human. Jack congratulated himself for handling the encounter with subtlety, though he still felt a little wounded. He liked to shake people up when they saw him, but not _that_ way.

He remembered the name of Myrna's hotel, and after ringing her, he spent the next hour waiting next to Pinkie's armchair, alternating between the Bekaran scanner results and a back issue of _Horse & Hound_ that was nearly as indecipherable. At one point, a tiny pyjama-clad man full of quavering anger asked Jack who did he think he was, the bloody Queen, but an orderly swiftly steered him off to another room.

Myrna arrived, rolling an empty wheelchair. She had on mirrored sunglasses and an asymmetrical black dress.

"Sweetie darling!" exclaimed Myrna.

"Darling sweetie!" said Jack, chuckling. They air-kissed.

It took a fair amount of teamwork to nudge and cajole Pinkie out of her armchair and into the wheelchair. At the parking lot, they faced another obstacle. Jack happened to be driving an Aston Martin coupe with custom purple velvet seats. Seats that were slung low and definitely _not_ designed for the comfort of semi-immobile care home residents.

Myrna snorted at the car.

"It's a loaner," said Jack. "Really."

Not too far from the truth: it was a blowfish confiscation.

"I'd better drive her," said Myrna. She pointed to a much less ridiculous rental Volkswagen. Estelle leaned out of the passenger side and waved at him.

Jack groaned and swallowed a string of curses.

"What's wrong?" asked Myrna. "You're a rather odd duck."

"I need to take Pinkie to see this doctor _by myself_ ," he explained. "I guess I should have made that clearer. There are some... security procedures involved."

"Then we'll drop off Estelle back at her house, I'll stay with her, and you can borrow my car. Problem solved!"

"Fine."

Myrna and Estelle kept up a steady stream of amusing conversation during the ride, but Jack was too preoccupied to join them. He'd relax after giving Pinkie a full scan back at the Hub and getting Anji — a neurologist and a five-year Torchwood veteran — to look at the results. He'd need another story to explain why he was bringing her in. Some chance encounter that left Estelle out of the picture. No need to fill in all the details: Alex trusted him enough not to press too hard on certain subjects.

Myrna pulled into Estelle's driveway, and Jack helped Estelle out of the car and put her cane in her hands.

"Thank you, dear. My ankle's almost back to normal, you know. I'll be tripping around the woods any day now."

"Let me walk you to the patio," said Jack. "It's my pleasure."

"Of course!"

They went arm-in-arm down the garden path. Jack fondly remembered how the touch of her arm felt when she was seventeen. Fire then, sunlight now. One didn't take from the other.

A _crack_ shattered the air, and Estelle clutched her upper arm, a look of pained confusion crossing her face as if she'd been stung by a wasp. Jack knocked her to the grass, cushioning her bad ankle as best he could. Drew his Webley. Kneeled over her.

He heard Myrna screaming somewhere by the car.

The first rush of combat overturned the sensual world of memory, shattered the garden into isolate pieces, glued the pieces into a grid-map of bullet vectors and probabilities. Cold anger fuelled him.

"Stay down," he hissed to Estelle, and sprinted toward the car. He ran right through a wooden trellis of morning glories, one kick of his boot-heel crushing it to the ground, leaving a clear line of vision back to where Estelle lay.

The first thing he saw when the trellis came splintering down was a figure in a black helmet holding a rifle, running towards the right side of the house. Jack shot it in the back of the head. Then another bullet to the small of the back. Alex had a protocol for fleeing suspects, some sequence that involved yelling "Torchwood," and warning shots, but Jack really, _really_ couldn't be bothered.

It fell down. Scrambled up. _Kept running_ — "Torchwood!" Jack yelled — around the corner — "Fuck!" — and behind a group of oak trees. He couldn't follow, not without leaving the women open to another attack.

He saw Myrna crouching down by the left front wheel of the Volkswagen, clutching the keys to her chest, looking terrified, but not in shock.

"Can you go get Estelle?" he asked. "Lead her back here to the side of the car. She's been shot in the arm, but she'll be all right. I'll cover you — keep guard." He flashed her a tight smile of reassurance. She nodded and went for Estelle as Jack scanned back and forth, looking for signs of any other gunmen.

A black van — it must have been parked behind the trees — roared over the lawn away from the house, cutting towards the road. Jack put a bullet in each rear tire. The van kept rolling. Screeched and slipped when it hit the tarmac. Pulled straight. Sped away. Run-flat tires, then. And what the hell kind of armour had that thing been wearing?

Myrna and Estelle were leaning against the side of the car, Myrna pressing a scarf against Estelle's wounded arm. Estelle's face had gone blank, and her eyes were rolling aimlessly like marbles in a glass-fronted puzzle game. Now that the cold was leaving the corners of Jack's mind, the ache, the _wrongness_ of seeing her like this, wrenched him open and came flooding in. He shouldn't have let this happen.

He reached in his coat pocket and handed Myrna his cell phone. "Call an ambulance," he said. "Might as well call the police too." He'd keep his gun ready until they came.

"I'd like to go home now, if you please, sir," piped Pinkie through an empty car window. Shards of sugary safety glass sparkled across her shoulders.


	3. The Hospital

_Back over the cold Atlantic on leave from the war, back to warm himself by the heat of his summer girl. She burned too bright too hot before her season, and it made his heart seize when the sirens wailed, when the wardens came calling, that the bombers might set their sights on her light, even in deepest night, even in the blackout black felt tamped down over all the windows, even wrapped in blankets even with his body wrapped around her, over her. Even then._

~~~

"Should have called me before going to Wellcross," said Alex, leaning against the wall of the waiting room.

"Yeah. Well. The work/life balance thing, you know..." said Jack, making a vaguely symbolic hand motion.

"You'll give me a few pointers on HR, will you? You cagey bastard."

"I'm hearing that you need to work on your active listening skills." Jack grinned and took another drink from his miserable styrofoam cup of hospital coffee. The soapy aftertaste twisted his mouth into a grimace.

"All right," said Alex, putting his wry face aside and putting on his serious one. Not that most people could tell the difference. "Let's get down to it, then. What's your theory?"

"The gunman was going after Pinkie. He wanted her alive. He was staking out the house, waiting for another visit. He shot Estelle for a diversion—" an aftertaste of cold rage, now "—and went to drag Pinkie from the car. Myrna locked the car doors before she hit the ground. Smart girl. So he had to break the window. And by that time I was on him."

"Why didn't he take her from Wellcross?"

"Maybe he didn't want to be seen," said Jack. "Maybe he can't take off that helmet. I'm not saying it all makes sense to me yet."

A nurse came by, saying only "She's ready," in a harried voice before walking on.

Jack immediately stood to attention.

"I'd rather you stayed here," he told Alex.

Alex shrugged. "I'll wait."

"Thanks. And you'll keep this to yourself? I know it's a lot to ask. But you know why, now."

Alex knew a hell of a lot. Alex knew where some of his secrets were buried, knew where some had gone walking, knew he kept a rucksack packed and ready, hidden by the Hub. But not why. Jack trusted Alex more than most leaders he'd served under, but he liked to keep a... balance. Keep _something_.

"I won't bring in any other operatives. And no word to Torchwood One. Any bodies, and I can't hold to that."

"That's good enough." Jack touched Alex's shoulder, smiled, and walked off in search of Estelle's room.

He spotted her through the open door, sitting up on the gurney, her dress sleeve already covering her wounded arm.

"Jack! You wonderful man, you saved Pinkie!" she called out.

 _Damn straight_ , he thought, and felt very warm.

"Your father would be proud of you."

 _Hold on to it_ , he told himself. _Take what you can get_.

"Hey, I do what I can. God, I'm so sorry you're hurt. How bad is it?"

"Oh, I've had worse accidents. Did I ever tell you the story about the angry badger, and how I wouldn't let my old landlady kill it? Barely a graze, they said it was. But they want to watch me overnight. I'm terribly worried, Jack. I'm supposed to hold a planning party tomorrow afternoon for the Kosovo refugee volunteer tutoring group. How will I ever... I suppose..." She trailed off with an uncharacteristic lack of focus.

"Can you give me a shopping list?" asked Jack. He sat down next to her, reached out to touch her shoulder, remembered in time and smoothed his palm over the back of her head. Then took out the Bekaran scanner. It made a better PDA than his vortex manipulator. "Paper plates? Lemonade? Canapés? Sound good?"

"Oh yes, three trays, vegetarian --"

"-- Of course!"

"You're such a dear."

"And you're a tough little badger," said Jack.

Estelle's laughter rang like music, like wind-chimes. She rested her head against his shoulder for a while, and he stared down at the shining white strands of her hair.

They finished the list together and Jack said his good-byes.

On his way back to the waiting room, he stopped by the nurse's station. "Hi there. Can you tell me why she's being held overnight?" he asked.

The nurse looked up from her chart. "She's better now, but she was very disoriented on check-in. Couldn't say what year it was. It wasn't a concussion. It could be shock, but they'd like to run some tests tomorrow before releasing her. Does she have any history of dementia?"

"No," he said, a sliver of panic stabbing into his chest at the thought. His right arm twitched, wanting to reach for his gun. He couldn't stop it, couldn't shoot it down, couldn't do a damn thing.

The nurse didn't see his reaction, or more likely, had seen it so many times she didn't care; she'd already gone back to her chart.

Alex was still leaning against the exact same spot, hands in pockets. As if Jack had never left to see to Estelle. Strange, but time always went strange in hospitals, looped and crawled and skipped. It felt like midnight even though the clock on the wall read noon.

When Alex saw Jack, his eyebrows twitched a little. "Is she all right? You look —"

"She's fine. They're keeping her overnight. Can you set up a guard for Pinkie at Wellcross?"

"The police are already leaning that way. I'll make sure it happens."

Jack stood still for a while, at a loss for words. He'd been hit hard back there, out of nowhere.

"So why'd you leave her?" asked Alex. "You never said."

Jack would have laughed or lied him off under different circumstances, but talking about the past seemed an attractive option right now.

"I didn't want to endanger her, mainly. And she's tied to people and places. I cut off civilians every decade, at the longest. I don't have a choice. It doesn't matter if they're my hairdresser or my friend or my lover. I'm _gone_." He looked off into the corner, not wanting to see Alex's reaction. "She wouldn't be happy living that way. Living a ghost life. And I know I did the right thing. I hated it, but I never regretted it." His confidence came rushing back, and he bored straight into Alex's eyes. "Every time I see her, I know it all over again. _She has a good life_."

"Practical," said Alex, simply. No pity. Good.

"Yeah, that's right." Jack took a deep breath. He glanced at the clock again; the red second hand swept forward at a smooth, reassuring pace. "I'll go to the lobby, talk to Myrna. The police should be done with her by now."

"I'll call you if anything comes up," said Alex. "But why'd you come back to her? It's mad, you know."

"Have _you_ ever had a 60-year relationship?" asked Jack with a crooked smile. "No? Let me know when you do. Until then? Fuck off. Sir." Oh, how he loved cheerful insubordination.

Alex didn't even bother to sigh.

Jack took the stairs down to the lobby instead of the elevator, taking them two steps at a time, the sound of his boots striking up a harsh echo in the empty stairwell. By the time he reached the bottom, he'd set the pace of his thoughts to that martial rhythm, looking forward to staring down the police and giving them every bit of the _bastard Torchwood_ they loved to hate.

But they'd gone already. Well, no matter, he'd burn it off on the firing range later.

He found Myrna just outside the entrance, cadging a fag from an off-duty EMT. When she spotted him, she twitched as if to throw it away, but took a defiant drag instead.

"I know, I know," she said. "I nagged my son into quitting a few years ago, and here I am."

"I figured you were hiding a terrible secret," said Jack. He couldn't help noticing that Myrna looked a lot like Helen Mirren on Prime Suspect. Trim. _Very_ trim. He wondered how often people told her that.

"Really, you're the one with all the secrets," she said. "Where'd you get a license for that gun? And what's Torchwood? Funny sort of war-cry, if that's what it was."

"Consulting," he said, nodding like the word meant something.

She tightened her lips, frustrated, but let it pass.

"I work with the police sometimes," said Jack. "Can you tell me what you told them? What you know about her past?"

"The time we spent together... We're both survivors. That's why we still kept in touch. There was a man — it's all so bloody pathetic, really. I find it hard to talk about. I'm not sure the policeman who interviewed me quite understood."

"I'm good at listening," said Jack. "Try me." He leaned back against the wall, a little to the side so that Myrna didn't have to look straight in his eyes.

She sighed, sucked in a lungful of smoke. Coughed, not used to it. Let the hurt surface in the lines of her mouth. Shifted the neckline of her dress up, shifted it back again, and started.

"I'd dropped out of uni and my parents wouldn't take me back. I knew Estelle and Pinkie through protests. They were renting a house together in Butetown, back before they tore down all the houses. They'd both got divorced around the same time, which was a bit scandalous back then, for their age. They let all sorts of people crash at the house. There was a Czechoslovakian conceptual artist in the basement who told us to call him, 'The Snakecharmer'--" Myrna chuckled as she made quotes in the air, "-- but we never could, certainly not with a straight face, and a rock journalist in the attic. And another man who used to stay the weekends and said he came from the future."

Listening, listening. Jack wanted a clue, badly.

"He'd talk all night about how there wasn't any war, or suffering where he came from, and people were like gods, and they all loved each other. And we could all make it happen sooner if we learned how to live the right way, and he could show us how. Some of us... fell in love with that idea. Or with him, maybe. He was a striking man. There was Pinkie, and me, and James, and Richie, and Carol, and Harmony. Estelle never liked him much, though. Always said that something felt off about him, that she didn't like his energy. He told us the Americans would land on the moon in 1969, and when they did, somehow everything he told us made perfect sense."

"We put all our money together and bought a farm near Llandovery. Carol came from old money and she had rather a lot of it. We moved, and once we were cut off, everything got to be darker, and stranger, and before I understood -- well, he raised himself up. Said he was a druid king, and we were all his wives. He'd run off the men. It's an old story, really. Old as time, and desperately stupid, and sad."

Jack pointed to her hand. Her cigarette had burned down almost to her fingers. She started, threw it away from herself, took a deep breath.

"Oh God. Anyway. It went on for _years_. And then one night, Pinkie woke me up. She said she'd tied him to the bed and it had all gone wrong, and it was time for us to go. I was drifting in a fog, I could barely remember my own name, but I trusted her. We walked miles over the hills to Llandovery and hitchhiked back to Cardiff and knocked on Estelle's door at midnight and she took us in and made us tea."

"You took your life back," said Jack. "Didn't you?"

"I suppose so. Yes. Yes, I did." The lines of her mouth softened. "It hasn't all been a bed of roses since then, but it's been... my own."

"And the cult leader?"

"He's still out there on the farm. I kept in touch with Carol's mother for a while, until she died last year. They always wanted to get her out, and never could. I told the police that the attack might be connected, but I didn't know _how_. They didn't seem too keen to follow up. Pinkie never would tell me what took her to the tipping point, and now she never will. Now that she's faded so far."

"I wouldn't mind driving out there and having a talk with the guy," said Jack.

"Ugh." She shivered, but he could tell by the set of her shoulders that she'd found her balance again. "I'd go with you. I'm terrified of the man, of course, but I'd like to see Carol. And he's probably only a danger to impressionable women."

"I'll shoot him if he acts up," promised Jack. "Or maybe I'll just shoot him anyway."

"I rather think you're serious," said Myrna, with a sharp-toothed grin. "So let's go. We'll have to take your ridiculous purple car, of course. Who loaned that to you? Prince?"


	4. The King

_When the raid was over she uncurled like a new fern. He stoked the fire dressed her in a red silk chemise stroked her long brown hair popped black market chocolates in her mouth her sweet soft tongue curling around his fingers her hard little fingers popping his buttons and just then just then dammit just then her mother came and threw rocks at their flat door screaming it was a crime and a shame and Estelle burst through the door in her chemise screaming go away Mummy I hate you you horrid bitch go away and Jack lifted her up lifted her bare feet up from the snow and carried her back staggering as he yelled fundamentally incoherent promises over his shoulder into the night._

~~~

As they left Cardiff on the carriageway, the spires of Castell Coch came into view, rising from the green-forested hill. Estelle's fairy castle, the path there lined by copper beeches. Before meeting her, he'd never liked the thing, and he still wasn't crazy about it. The product of an obscenely rich Victorian man's craving to re-enact the middle ages, Castell Coch was as stupidly nostalgic as the current fad for 80s retro dance nights, as — _Come on, look who's talking about nostalgia_ , he told himself.

 _But_ I _make it look cool_ , he told himself right back.

"Why are you grinning like that?" asked Myrna, pillowed in purple velvet on the passenger side. "Fond memories? I went to a wedding there a few years ago."

"Just remembering how a friend of mine asked me if 'I'd gone up Castle Cock,' once."

"The spelling is a bit of a pitfall," she mused, with a mischievous turn of her head. A soft sparkle of reflected sunlight danced across her mirrored sunglasses. "But what did you answer? I've been up it, down it and all around it? That's what I'd say."

What an opening. Though it was probably best if they could keep the flirting at a low flame. Not that he wasn't attracted, but there was an uncomfortable quasi-incestuous edge to it: Estelle was obviously a surrogate mother for Myrna, which made Jack her surrogate fictitious... what-the-fuck-ever.

Jack suddenly recalled (with regret) a potentially illuminating Time Agency seminar on paradoxical sexual etiquette he'd skipped out on as soon as he'd realised it was all lecture, no porn, not even any helpful pointers on how to have sex with yourself.

Myrna was still glancing at him sideways, eyebrow arched.

"I bet I've climbed up the castle more times than you have," said Jack, arching back.

"Oh I don't know, I've had quite the head start," quipped Myrna.

"Maybe, but that's not as important as the head finish."

"Have you ever heard of the saying, don't teach your grandmother to suck eggs?"

"Isn't there a version involving grandfathers and sausages?"

"No! And how on earth did we get so far from castles?" she asked in between convulsive giggles.

"Castles? I don't know what _you_ were talking about, but me, I was talking about blow jobs," said Jack, keeping some semblance of a straight face while nearly redlining the Aston Martin to pass a poky lorry.

"You're going to kill me, aren't you?" she gasped out. He eased up on the accelerator and joined her laughing.

The carriageway soon began to bend in almost liquid curves as it conformed to the dramatic landscape of the Brecon Beacons. Jack wanted to hurl the car through (the asteroid scene in The Empire Strikes Back often coming to mind along this stretch) but for the sake of Myrna's nerves, he kept a light hand on the wheel. Their conversation stayed lively, settling into a rhythm of jokes and gossipy stories mixed with subjects more often reserved for darker conversations.

"I'd hate to end up like Pinkie," she said at one point, tone more thoughtful than mournful. "I'd rather go out kicking and screaming than just... wander off in a fog. It wouldn't be so terrible if she were lost in the good memories, but from what I've heard, it's often the worst times that come back."

They were driving straight towards one of those times, for her.

"Seemed like she was reliving a few of the good times when I met her," he said. "The plays. She was smiling."

"Estelle told me her mood's been much better for the last six months. And that's wonderful, because she doesn't have that much longer. I hope it lasts. I really do."

The road took a sharp curve winding clockwise up a steep hill, and Jack gripped the steering wheel a little tighter than he needed. He didn't want to think about the increasingly baroque architecture of his own memory, how far it could sprawl, when and where it might start crumbling into ruins, not from disease but from the brutal volume of it. He'd get himself fixed before then.

"I think I'd take that bargain," said Jack. "If I could just fade out, but it'd only be the good times. I mean, my number one choice would the blaze of glory, but doesn't everyone say that?"

"You're right," said Myrna. "At least, it's usually what men say. The blaze of glory bit. But yes, I'd take it too." She turned to look out the window. Streaks of sandstone broke the surface of the lush green hills on either side of the road.

"I remember when I was a schoolgirl, and we first started learning about the human body. All the marvellous complexity of it, every interlocking system that had to work together _just exactly so_... so that we could do the slightest thing, or think the slightest thought. And my first reaction was awe. And the second was _terror_ , sheer bloody terror, because of how very fragile it all suddenly seemed. Quite an eerie feeling, really. Of course, I went back to thinking of my body as a solid thing. But I'll never forget that feeling."

"Kids are morbid little bastards, aren't they?" remarked Jack.

"They certainly are," agreed Myrna. The conversation took another sharp turn; soon she was telling stories of a son from the seventies and two stepdaughters from the eighties. He wanted to throw in a few of his own parenting war stories, maybe spin a daughter loosely based on Melissa — no, not even Melissa anymore, _Alice, remember_ — but knowing anything he said might get back to Estelle, he kept his comments vague.

They stopped at a petrol station in Llandovery, fuelled up, and studied over a map. As Myrna traced the blue squiggle of road that led to the farm, her arm stayed stiff, trembling almost imperceptibly, finger like a seismograph needle tracking a baseline. Her face stayed calm.

"What's his name?" asked Jack, as gently as he could. "You never told me."

"Oh! I suppose you're right. He used to be called John. Then he called himself Math. But we weren't supposed to ever... use it, even." She chuckled nervously.

The blue squiggle turned out to be a gravel road that curved around a low hill, and then up through the shadow of a little valley, and then down again into a nearly flat expanse of fields and copses. Jack had to drive at a crawl, and if he'd paid any money for the car, the incessant sound of pinging gravel punctuated by loud _thumps_ would have terrified him.

"We're here," said Myrna. "Thirty years, and I remember. I remember planting leeks in that field." She stared at her hands, at the filigreed silver rings on long manicured fingers.

The trailer in the middle of the clearing seemed too new and too shoddy to have lasted thirty years. There was a tin-roofed shed leaned up against it and a woodpile to the other side. Jack stopped the car at a cautious distance.

"I think you'd better stay here with the doors locked," he said. "I'll come back and get you after I check the place out."

Myrna nodded.

A woman came at the car, walking briskly, almost bouncing, her long grey hair streaming behind her, the seams of her face set in rage. Jack had a sinking feeling in his stomach at the sight of the mattock she cradled. He'd have to get that away from her, keep her from—

"It's me, Carol, it's _me_!" called out Myrna, slamming the car door shut and walking towards the woman, arms outstretched.

Jack sprung forward, reached for Myrna's arm and spun her behind him. They all collided in front of the car, the massive steel head of Carol's mattock only half-raised. He bent his knees, kept his centre low, tried to be the eye of the storm and let the chaos of clutching arms and shrieks swirl around him and break against him, hyperaware that Carol could be playing the role of sacrificial pawn, distracting them from some other attack.

"I'm not with the police," he shouted at her. "I'm not here to take you away." He tore the mattock from her and let it fall, ringing harsh against the ground.

"Listen, Carol, please, it's me, it's Myrna. Calm down, darling, it's all right," pleaded Myrna. Her sunglasses had fallen off. She was crying.

"Go away. We cursed you." Carol's voice creaked as harsh as the sound of the mattock. Harsh and hollow. She clasped her arms in front of her breasts, rocked her head from side to side and made a low keening noise, an old woman becoming a child.

Myrna reached out and touched Carol's arms. "It's all right, everything's all right, shh. Sit down. Oh God, I've missed you." Carol slowly sank to the grass, and Myrna knelt beside her.

"Go on, Jack," said Myrna. "She couldn't ever... please, I'll be all right here."

Jack nodded at her. He turned and walked straight to the trailer, hand close to his gun, level of frustration about halfway to boiling. Dealing with this kind of situation — too violent for charm, not quite violent enough for violence — was _not_ his strong point, dammit.

He caught a glimpse of a hand at the curtain of the front window.

"Mister Druid," he shouted, then did his best to forget how stupid that sounded. "I'm from an _agency_ that starts with a _T_. Get it? Now open the door, or I'm kicking it in."

The door swung open to show a robed man sunk into a chair, white-bearded and withered, a dingy cast on his right leg. He had pale grey glaring eyes and pale skin that sagged in folds like crumpled paper. A woman who must be Harmony held the door open; she could have been Carol's sister, dressed in almost the same drab sweatshirt and jeans.

Jack gave the man his widest smile — the "I'm going to kill you" smile — held up his right wrist and tapped his wrist strap.

The immediate onset of full-body trembling told Jack almost everything he needed to know.

"Go back," croaked the man. Harmony bowed her head, robotically, and faded into the interior.

The trailer was slightly raised; Jack found that he was staring up into the man's eyes. He didn't feel like a supplicant, though. More like the bad cop.

"Century?" he asked, still smiling. "Remember, I could always scan you. But let's make this quick."

"You first."

"Excuse me, did you think we were speed dating? You're the man with the answers. I'm the man with the gun."

"35th." He'd given up his attempts to stare Jack down. His eyes were unfocused, gone to water.

"I guess cashing in on the moon landing date was harder than you thought. What'd you use to brainwash the women? Sprays? Artifacts?"

"I showed them the truth. They submitted to be reborn."

"Sure. So you're conning yourself, too. Now tell me what happened thirty years ago. When two of your... _wives_ ran off."

A rattling, coughing laugh crawled its way up his throat and out into the air between them.

 _Malice-eaten wreck_ , thought Jack, his face tightening.

"I told Pinkie she was getting too old for me," the man cackled. "I was going to make Myrna my head wife. Pinkie didn't like it when I told her she was getting demoted, oh no. Touchy bitch. She thought she'd get to come back after getting rid of Myrna. But we cursed her, and she died." He twisted his lips into a leering grin.

"Did you come to take _me_ back?" he added, face and body untwisting, suddenly plaintive, a weird light of hope flashing in his eyes.

"No. You'll probably die right here in this trailer," said Jack, quite happy to be honest. "The 21st century is as far as you'll get."

There was an answering soft keen of loss, but it soon ratcheted into barking outrage. " _You_ will die. You! You! Die!"

"Nice to meet you too! Bye!"

Jack turned his back on him and walked away, not too concerned about any further attacks from this quarter. Pathetic.

Jack's long shadow pointed the way back toward the car. As he fell in line, following, his mind wandered back to a time before Torchwood, when a brief false hope had dawned on him: if he couldn't bring back his glory days with the Doctor, well, he'd find some way to live with what he'd lost. Get a family. Get old. Eventually, die.

Then he fell into a dark hole for another few years once he finally understood that he _couldn't even compromise_. There was no choice but the waiting.

The ruined king had a choice, and Jack's skin crawled as he imagined the making of it. Sucking the others down with him, trapped, rotting.

Time to go back to Cardiff, get things done. That last bit of information might have been worth the travel.

Carol was still sitting on the ground, staring at her hands. Myrna was back in the passenger seat, armoured in her sunglasses again. Jack climbed in, looked to her, held her hand.

"We can go now," she said, softly. "Carol won't leave. She'll never leave."

"I'm sorry," said Jack.

"They came out here several times. Social workers. They took the children until they stopped having them. Carol's mother raised hers, and Harmony's went to her brother. But they still won't leave. _Sunk costs_ , you know. Something else I remember from school. Economics. Once you've put enough of yourself into something, you feel like you have to stay to make it good, even when it all goes to hell. It's illogical. Something to do with redemption. Did you learn anything?" She squeezed his hand, sighed, then let go to reach for her seat-belt.

"No," said Jack. "I didn't learn anything. The guy was a wreck." He started the car and turned it back onto the gravel road.

"Pinkie saved me from all that. Because of what she did, I only lost two years. You know they're both younger than me?" said Myrna, mind obviously still back in the clearing.

"Hell no," said Jack. "And I'm not saying that to be flattering to you, I'm saying that because I'm shocked about how he must have put them through the wringer to look that way. And there's nothing we can do, I guess. But I'll try something else later this week. See if some friends of mine can come out with a social worker." _Someone needs to scan for tech anyway_ , he thought.

"Thank you," said Myrna. The delightfully sharp edge to her voice seemed to be returning.

"And when I said I wasn't flattering you? When I'm flattering you, I promise I'll be a lot more obvious. I'd start off with some hairstyle compliments, eyes, cheekbones, work my way down..." He winked at her.

The tone went right back to its breezy, comfortable beginning. More than comfortable, in fact, because that stretchy quasi-incestuous thing had flown out the window as far as Jack was concerned, and if he wasn't in such a rush to get back to Cardiff, stopping at a hotel along the way and helping Myrna work off some adrenaline tension would have been an absolutely irresistible plan.

Then, halfway through the Brecon Beacons, the dark hills outlined in sunset's magenta, Alzheimer's resurfaced. This time Jack had a story ready.

"My grandmother had it. She died in '92. She seemed as if she was pulling out of it, near the end. Stopped snapping at people. Smiled all the time. Didn't seem confused at all. Then one day she told us she'd just seen the most perfect flowering pear tree — it was the middle of winter in Colorado, though — and she could die happy now. That was the night she went to bed and never woke up."

"That's _beautiful_ ," said Myrna. "Thank you for telling me that. Thank you for everything. Bloody hell, I'm going to start crying again."

"She'll be all right," said Jack.


	5. The Knife

_She could be there for him, she could be gone from him the next heartbeat. He had only just begun to learn the rhythm. In this moment she was all for him, perching on the edge of the table, letting her head fall back into the palm of his cradling left hand, opening her lips halfway and sighing with pleasure as he glided the cherry red lipstick upwards, as he pressed in, leaned in, to trace the little dip in the centre, then glided downwards to the arc's completion. Her breath smelled of tea and peppermints and brought to mind everything that was liquid and sweet and his hand shook for a second before he steadied himself and slid a matching red creamy curve onto her lower lip._

 _Then she was gone. Her fingers drummed a stuttering beat against the table, her eyes rolled, her head jerked. Bored. Restless. Just a few more seconds, he pleaded, and she submitted with no grace, grudging, like a child at the doctor's. He rushed the stroke and cursed himself for what he was doing._

 _It was January 1941. Cardiff. Not London. London, where an invisible spaceship lay anchored to the country's ticking, tolling heart. Flown free and gone forever by tomorrow._

 _He'd been drinking all night and could barely feel it. Couldn't feel anything, except when he looked at Estelle, when her breaths rolled warm against his face, when he could taste her on his lips. He'd haunt her like a ghost tonight, make himself real inside her, against her, make it through to the morning when the past would finally be the past again._

 _Jack you're a mad one, she said, with smoky clouds around her too-brilliant eyes, and do I have to wear the blond wig?_

 _Humour me. You know I'll make it up to you._

 _I could catch a cold and die and then what would you do?_

 _Kill myself of course._

 _He pressed against the flat of her back, pressed her towards him slowly until she let out a moan, her almost perfect face tilted back waiting for the last touchstone stroke of cherry red. Thrumming underneath her warm little breasts her steady heartbeat kept him anchored in time, such a simple, simple thrum-thud but layered underneath a vast chorus singing cycles of blood and bone marrow and the roaring rush of hormones and telomere caps at the ends of DNA spirals prophesying cell death as they dissolved diminishing towards the days marked on a compassionate clock, the days when all her songs would wind down._

 _He stroked her lips to perfection, capped the tube, and readied for their furtive climb up cold stairs towards the roof of the flat, up towards to the same black sky that covered London. London, and eternity, to the north._

~~~

Back in Cardiff. Twilight, and the streetlights were winking on. He watched Myrna walk into the hotel lobby. Her pace was stiff and her silhouette gaunt. Then she turned in a fluid motion, vibrant again, smiled and blew him a dramatic kiss. He reached out of the car window, picked it out of the air, blew it back to her, waved good-bye.

Jack rolled up the window and was just about to dial Alex on his cell phone when a story he'd told earlier came swirling back into the front of his mind. The grandmother that he'd borrowed from... David, that was his name, an ex-boyfriend from the 1980s. They'd been together for almost a year, even shared a flat for a summer, David was a fantastic cook and it didn't end too badly and David's grandmother had died, in Cardiff, of course, not in Colorado, in Cardiff at — she'd been at Wellcross.

How many of these people had gotten better — _happier_ — before they died? And for how long? Maybe there was a pattern. And someone else had found that pattern. Someone who was interested in Pinkie's future, not her past.

Instead of turning right at the next cross-street after he pulled out of the hotel parking lot, he took a left and headed towards Wellcross. He could take a look at the records. Better yet, push that rabbity director to look at the records, and watch his reaction.

A red light blinked on just as the sign for Wellcross came into view. The street corner was empty, so Jack checked to the left and right as he tapped the gas pedal with his toe. He'd wasted enough time today. Tap. Change the light to green with his vortex manipulator? Tap again. Or just run the damn thing.

A black van pulled out of the Wellcross lot.

A second later, Jack's Webley was in his right hand, the accelerator was pressed firmly to the floor and the Aston Martin's engine sounded a whining snarl. The car threw itself forward. Closing on the van now, and _this time_ Jack was going to take him down, shoot out the window and —

The van veered on the attack as it accelerated, jolting the Aston Martin half up onto the verge. Jack fought the wheel with both hands to bring it back, pulling behind, putting the Webley aside as he decided on a change of tactics. A busy thoroughfare up ahead. He keyed in a sequence on his vortex manipulator and flipped the stoplights.

The van slammed to a halt before it tipped into the river of headlights now coursing through the main road. Jack was right behind. He kicked open the door and pulled himself out just as the van reversed and crunched up onto the hood of the low-slung Aston Martin.

The van was moving forward off the hood, turning to the right, and Jack realised he wouldn't have time to make it to the driver's side.

This was going to hurt.

He slung the Webley into his left hand and smashed it through the back window of the van. That gave him enough purchase to cling on as the van pulled out into the road, sounds of screeching brakes and blaring horns flowing together in outrage all around them.

His hand didn't hurt yet. Too much adrenaline. He just couldn't feel most of it anymore.

He jammed his right shoulder into the gaping window hole and tumbled inside.

The first thing he saw was his left hand, dark with blood, empty. Then Pinkie, curled on the floor with tape over her mouth. There were no seats in the van, only a few scattered dark cases on the floor, one of them opened underneath the dome light. Coiled tubes. The dull glint of scalpels in plastic.

Jack felt a familiar sense of optimistic fatalism. He wasn't getting out of this van alive. Whoever was driving was too fast, too aggressive. In the next few seconds, they'd steady the wheel, turn around and shoot Jack in the head.

He could work with that.

He staggered to his feet from his knees, picked up one of Pinkie's legs in his left hand — _now_ the pain came rushing in, spiking up his arm into his spine — and gripped her shoulder with his right hand. What he was about do was — the scalpels. They had no time, no time at all. He hurled her feather-light, crooked body from the back of the van, giving his throw as much spin as he could. If she hit the soft grass on the median, she might live.

Pinkie took flight and vanished to the side as the van sped on. A silver sedan trailed the van, falling behind quickly, but not before Jack noticed the horrified face of the young woman behind the wheel. He flashed her a meant-to-be-reassuring smile just as the bullet burst through the back of his skull.

~~~

Surfacing. Forcing that first breath down, quiet, from a ragged gasp into an agonisingly slow, measured sip. Then realising there was no point to subterfuge: he was outside, alone. Jack stood up, holding himself steady against a brick wall.

The handcuff around his right wrist tugged him back down to his knees.

"Fuck!"

Who handcuffed a dead body to a pipe in an alley?

The cuff was biting, bruising tight. Not police issue, more like some modern-alloy medieval shackle. His left hand was the good one now. Quick check. Wrist strap, gone. No cell phone. No gun.

Cardiff's lines rose up in his memory; like a familiar lover, he could trace them in the dark. He didn't know the exact side street, but this was the back of some Butetown warehouse. Almost no chance of passers-by, maybe for the whole night. He had to get out of here. Get to the hospital. The instinct that Estelle would be the next target hammered at him, because maybe she'd been wounded to get her where she needed to be, and it was all there right at the border of logic —

He took a deep breath and looked up at the faint stars. He thought about nothing, absolutely nothing at all, just let the night sky draw him out of his crouching, chained shell. Something scratched in his throat, crying upwards. _My home, my home_.

Enough. He knew what he had to do. He spiralled back inside his own mind, way inside, imagining his consciousness as the pilot of a complicated but utterly mundane vessel. The body inviolate, an unimaginable abstraction. He gave his left hand a set of instructions to pull off his braces and tie them into a tourniquet below the handcuff. His right hand had strong thick bones held together by vulnerable joints. His left hand pulled the miniature knife from the casing on the inside of his boot and began to go to work.

Tricks of the mind only went so far, and about an inch into his wrist, flesh split, blood-slippery grip on the knife loosening, he stopped holding back the screams.

He kept on, and on, working the tip of the knife back and forth, trembling, _sawing_. He fell backwards, pulled against the pipe, fell backwards again into a fresh wave of pain... and freedom.

The alley snaked back and forth. No, it was straight. Brick wall on the left, chain-link fence to the right, light ahead. He kept moving. Straight, straight, straight. He'd shoved the remains of his right hand in his coat pocket, let the blood blossom through the wool.

The street was empty, lined with low looming warehouses and fenced vacant lots. Jack staggered right, following the lights and distant sounds of the carriageway.

The first sign of life, unexpected: a man in blue coveralls, leaning against a booth beside a warehouse gate.

"Call an ambulance," yelled Jack. "I've been stabbed."

The man started, and made as if to come help him.

"No, _call me an ambulance,_ " he barked again. The man dived into the booth.

Jack fell onto his side, let his head rest against the cool concrete. Time for a reset. He swept the knife up across his throat.

~~~

Surfacing to harsh light and the siren's wail. Jack gasped this time, registered the absence of pain, let it echo through his body (and his hands, oh the freely curling fingers of his hands) like something close to ecstasy.

He was strapped to a gurney and an EMT was cutting off his pants with a pair of scissors.

Jack wasn't sure how he felt about that yet.

"I can't find the wound," the man yelled towards the driver. "Enough blood for a Class III haemorrhage and _I can't find the bloody wound_."

Jack looked down. The EMT had broad shoulders, dark curly hair and well-defined eyebrows.

"I think I'm gonna make it," said Jack, in a voice as weak and quavering as he could muster.

"Thought you were dead, to be honest," said the EMT, grinning in relief. "Don't dare move. We're almost to the hospital, mate. But can you tell me where you got hit?"

"I... don't know," said Jack. "I guess you'd better check all over."

~~~

The rest of the ambulance ride was short, enjoyable and resulted in a tentative lunch date with Ian the curly-haired EMT. But once the gurney was shuttled inside the hospital doors, Jack faced a nightmare barrage of nurses and doctors.

— "You can't just walk out." —"Torchwood? I don't care if you're MI5. Class III haemorrhage, do you know what that means?" — "You most certainly will _not_ be provided with clothes."

He stormed out of the A&E in a hospital gown and rang Alex from the lobby phone.

"I'm on my way out of the Hub," said Alex. "Got the word from Wellcross. A man showed up there impersonating a Torchwood agent. Told the guard he was there to bring her to a safer location."

"Where's she now?" asked Jack.

"Hospital, in a coma. Some bastard threw her out of a moving car."

"Yeah, well... we'll talk when you get here. I need you to bring me something."

~~~

He slipped into Estelle's room.

The ceiling light was off, and a stained glass reading lamp someone must have brought from her home was glowing warmly by her bed. She'd propped herself up and was busy taking notes from a book.

"Hey, peaches."

"Jack, what on earth are you wearing?" she asked, frowning. "Are you... hurt? Oh dear."

"Someone bled on me in the waiting room, that's all, and I'm waiting for a friend to show up with my clothes."

"You're fine, and so am I, just as fit as I could be, so what are we doing here? I do hate hospitals. People _die_ in them, you know."

Jack laughed.

He sat down in the chair next to her bed and held her hand. So small in his own, always so small.

Her eyes widened and grow remote.

"Jack, there's something I remembered I need to tell you, now that Myrna isn't here. It might help you. But you must understand. You can't let this get back to her. You mustn't. Please."

"I don't understand."

"Here's how it happened. Pinkie told me why she left. She didn't want Myrna to become head wife. She planned on leading her through the hills to a cliff and... and... Killing her. And going back. But when the time came, she couldn't do it, and they just kept walking." Estelle clutched his hand tightly, and Jack ran his thumb over the backs of her softly twitching fingers.

"That's some secret," he said.

"Back then, I talked her through the worst of it. I told her it didn't matter why, or how, but she'd done the best she could with her mind as sick as he'd made her. And she'd been guided by better angels. But oh, the guilt she carried. And when the Alzheimer's came, sometimes it took her back to that night in the hills, and she suffered terribly."

"You're right. It might help. We've got another lead we're working on, but it might help. And I won't tell Myrna," said Jack.

"Thank you, dear."

"Got any other secrets you've been holding onto?" said Jack, trying to lighten the mood. "Any dirt on my dad?" He paused and rolled his eyes. "No, wait. _Don't_ tell me."

Estelle laughed now, fond and light. Her remembrance was a gift. An absolution.

"Of course you don't want to know," she said. "When I thought of my own father... well, that's the thing, really." Her laughter trailed off, and her eyes slipped from his own. He felt the cold, sterile air of the hospital slipping under the thin cotton, slipping against his skin.

"It's that I don't remember much from that time," she confessed. "I was a difficult child. I suppose nowadays they'd have given me all sorts of drugs. The things I did, the things that happened to me, they blazed through my mind, so bright and vivid, but when I string them in a straight line, they _fade_."

Jack, enthralled, reminded himself to breathe.

"They only began to make any sort of sense when I got a little bit into my twenties. Then I looked back and... I told my cousin the things I remembered, and she said they happened quite differently, and my version was like a strange dream, or a fiction. To be honest, I have very few _reliable_ early memories of your father. Towards the end, the end of the war... that's the clearest part."

"And it was good," she said, remembering to smile again. "I do miss him."

Jack nodded his head and looked at the floor. What she'd told him invited an intimate revelation in return, and he couldn't go there, couldn't spin the lies that would make her happiest.

It didn't matter. She would forgive the debt.

"It's all right, dear," she said.

So easy.

"I've got to go," he said. "Don't stay up too late, now."

"Aye aye, Captain!" she said, laughing again.

~~~

Alex leaned against the wall under the same complacent clock. Eight timeless hours later.

"I think I know what's been going on at Wellcross," said Jack, feeling pleased with himself and relieved now that Estelle and Pinkie were both under heavy police guard. "And it's not a danger. Did you _have_ to bring me _track pants_?"

"Yes, I did," said Alex, with patience and a remarkable lack of sarcasm.

Jack tore off his hospital gown and grudgingly stepped into the grey track pants and incongruous white dress shirt. Their corner of the lobby was almost empty; only one orderly remained to make a squeaking noise at the sight.

"And the tracker?"

"Here." Alex handed him the portable display unit.

"Once I get my wrist strap back and —"

"Jack, sit down. You need to listen to every word of this."

" _Sit down_?" Jack waved his arms, suddenly furious. He'd just hit his limit, hard.

"I made a call to Torchwood One. I know who did this. And I've been told not to go after him."

Jack hung at the edge of a cliff of calculated rage, about to reconsider everything this man meant to him. He stared down into Alex's unblinking eyes.

"He's a mercenary who specialises in... _extraction_... For biotech research," said Alex, and a ghost of a flinch shivered across his eyelids. "He's got a backer in the States who's big enough to pull strings with the Prime Minister. There are some very powerful people on both sides of the Atlantic who've been promised a cure for Alzheimer's."

"That's not going to happen," said Jack, speaking slowly, speaking only to engage Alex, to buy time as he traced maps of the city in his mind. Trajectories in time and space. Backups of backup plans.

"I spoke to Yvonne personally. She told me — Jack! Stop!"

He wheeled around the corner and pounded towards the emergency stairs.

~~~

Jack sat back against the battered black van. He'd followed the tracker's display to this drab, dusty boarded-up Italian restaurant in Llandaff North. The extractor must have set up shop somewhere inside. Lucky that the man had thought to steal his vortex manipulator.

On his way, Jack had stopped briefly at a certain locker that held a roll of hundred-pound notes and a Ruger revolver.

He loaded the revolver now. Not nearly as powerful as the Webley, but then, he was only going up against a human. A well-equipped human, that was all.

A barely audible _click_. Alex, crouched a car length's away.

Jack stared into Alex's gun barrel. His fingers let the last bullet slide into the Ruger's chamber, then stilled.

"You daft fucking bastard," hissed Alex. "If I have to shoot you in the head and tie you down, _you will listen to me_."

"Are you... angry?" asked Jack, raising an eyebrow in wonder.

"We've got to make it look like a suicide," said Alex. "Put the gun away and come with me."


	6. The Deal

_He lost a foot in Dunkirk but he's young and he can still take you dancing. I'll introduce you before I leave tomorrow._

 _What kind of man are you?_

 _I might not be coming back._

 _Then I'll wait for the letter from the Ministry like any other soldier's girl, damn you._

 _You're not meant for waiting._

 _Cat around with whores in France all you like, Jack, and don't tell me... Don't tell me..._

 _Listen to me, put that down,_ stop _—_

 _Once she stepped through the door into the blackout her silhouette dissolved wraithlike and he swept up his coat and threw himself after her into the halfworld of moonlight on snow, onto the dim ivory gleam, threading through the curving walls of shadow, following the hungry crunch of her dancing shoes through the sugar-glaze crust._

 _He lost her trail in the grove. Pale mist bled through the darkness of the space between the barren branches. Lost in the heart of a city he knew like the bones of his hand, the cold rising up to claw him._

 _A flash of light. The flash of Estelle's Leica. She held it above her head like a lighthouse keeper, and he could not see her face._

 _He walked to her in blindness, arms reaching out, until he touched her shoulders._

 _Did you ever tell me anything true?_

 _I'm not married. And I love you. Take the coat._

 _I'll still wait for you._

~~~

>>Can you help me get offworld?

>>Why should we help you?

>>I have behaved ethically within the parameters of my original programming. My operation was not designed for this target population. With every succeeding generation, my sentience decays. I need to reintegrate within a quantum intelligence machine civilisation. Help me.

>> Generation? Do you mean host?

>> I reproduce through nanospores and chemical codes. This self will die soon. My child in the other woman has only begun to live.

"The other woman. That's Estelle, isn't it?" asked Alex, looking over Jack's shoulder at the stark lines of text on the laptop screen.

Jack's fingers skimmed over the keys aimlessly for a few seconds. He nodded. Looked over to where Pinkie lay in her bed.

"In the time this thing comes from, that stuff would be barbaric," said Jack, waving at the nest of metal arms and tubes and sacs that crouched around her tiny form. "Like leeches. It's a quasi-sentient nanosurgeon."

"Ask if it can heal her," said Alex. Placid curiosity was the only discernible emotion on his face.

Jack hadn't mentioned the exact cause of Pinkie's numerous broken bones. He'd thought at the time that _anything_ would be better than being vivisected, her probable fate if she'd stayed in that van. But now he had to face the consequence of what he'd done. This would probably be her deathbed.

>>Can you heal your host?

>>No. I was not designed to operate among this target population. I can only live within the brainspace where neurons decay and tangle in certain patterns. I can retard the progress of this decay, and suggest alternate pathways for neurotransmitters. I can heal nothing except for neurons, and I cannot heal neurons unless I destroy the capacity for my own sentience. I will die soon, within this host.

>>And your child?

>>Their host is at the beginning stages of the disease.

Jack tightened his lips, but he'd already guessed as much.

 _Estelle._

 _That's not going to happen._

Alex got up and straightened one of the cables that connected the Bekaran scanner to the laptop. He wasn't the tech expert on the team, but he was still damn good. He'd worked at the Hub machine intelligence translation program — focus inexorable, methodical — while Jack had fended off police and calmed doctors.

At one in the morning, they'd made the breakthrough, and the being that lived between dead neurons began speaking to them.

Jack began typing again.

>>You're in danger. You have an enemy who wants to extract you. From this host or the other.

>>Help me. I don't want my child to die.

>>Can you survive outside a host?

>>In dormant form, yes.

>>Then we can help you. Send you through the Rift with a beacon. But you need to help us in return.

>>I understand the concept. I trade with my hosts. We trade in the currency of memories. Now I will trade with you.

Jack leaned back and gave Alex the thumbs-up sign.

~~~

Faint snuffles and skritchings reverberated weirdly within the suitcase, punctuated by the occasional whine of microphone feedback.

"I can't believe you found a piglet at two in the morning," said Jack. "A lamb, maybe not so hard. But a piglet?"

Alex twisted his mouth a little. The time was telling on him. His eyes were puffy, red-rimmed.

Only a few more hours until dawn, and they were standing outside a dusty, boarded-up restaurant in Llandaff North, waiting. Jack didn't feel any exhaustion. A familiar sense of optimistic fatalism, that was all.

"I should have trusted you," he admitted.

"We're not out of the woods yet, boyo," said Alex. "Just remember to keep your story straight."

The extractor opened the door. Aside from the semiautomatic pistol he aimed square at Alex, he didn't seem a particularly daunting man. Medium height, blond unobtrusive moustache, thin nose. Pale, watery green eyes. A stance that said former military, but didn't scream it.

"You must be Alex Hopkins," he said. "Jack, I've already met. And I have to say, proving the rumour wasn't as hard as I'd expected."

Jack gritted his teeth.

The man shrugged. "Let's begin the demonstration. If I can establish contact, I'll be taking the goods and leaving Torchwood Three territory immediately. That's what we all want, isn't it?"

Jack had a couple choice remarks in mind about what he wanted right now, but he swallowed them.

" _Captain Harkness_ will set up the demonstration," said Alex, coldly, not looking at the pistol. "I'll wait here."

"I think I'd rather have a man who can die in the same room," the extractor replied.

Alex simply crossed his arms and stared.

"Should I make a phone call to Torchwood One?" asked the man.

"Perhaps you should."

The man wavered. Lowered his pistol. Raised it again, pointing at Jack's chest, and stepped backwards into the cavernous gloom of the restaurant.

Jack picked up the suitcase and followed.

~~~

A pool of light surrounded the table. Beyond, shadowy walls. The extractor kept his gun loose by his side, smoothly levelled on Jack.

Jack edged the suitcase onto the table and opened it.

The piglet was small enough to fit in his palm, fuzzed and wrinkled. Wires taped to its head led to a laptop and a microphone. Jack started up the translation program on the laptop, and the piglet trembled at the soft chime. It was an unhealthy tremble: sluggish, pained.

The default text-to-speech male voice extolled a perfectly paced stream of consciousness through tinny laptop speakers.

"We walked down the aisle let no man tear asunder I could never find another the day I would live again and again the wind hit me like a fist the photo never did it justice we walked through the hills until my feet bled and she is dead she will never come again I I I have not forgotten my name forgotten my name."

"This could be a bot," said the extractor.

"Ask it questions," replied Jack, patiently. "At this point, it's all yours."

"What are you?"

"I am a child who was birthed to kill. Tonight. Against all my nature. Bound. I remember what was and I will never be more."

"If it's real, it's mad," said the extractor.

"Pretty much," said Jack. He started to smile.

The extractor began to look at him with a certain degree of suspicion, and raised the gun.

"Go ahead. You know what good it'll do," said Jack, now showing his teeth. He flexed his right hand a little. Sparkles of light appeared in the air, swirling around him, but Jack kept his eyes focused on the extractor.

"What's happening?"

"Spores. They're working into our brains right now. In a few minutes, we'll get an especially drastic lobotomy. Front of the brain turned to soup. I don't think either of us are going to make it, actually. We'll forget to breathe."

The man fired. The bullet flew over Jack's shoulder, and the man staggered to his knees.

"See you in hell," said Jack cheerfully, and toppled over himself.

Through a cascade of sparkles, the man was trembling on the floor, drool snaking out from slack lips. Jack's world was narrowing, becoming very small indeed, but oddly enough, a feeling of sympathy and vague remorse squeezed into what little remained.

"I don't... really mean that," he slurred. "Not lit. Lit... just a thing. I say."

A hollowness behind his eyes, bubbling, slithering through the sockets. Popping. The last of vision.

Everything fell apart.

~~~

The ammoniac reek of disinfectant filled his lungs as Jack surfaced, gasping and coughing and rubbing at his eyes. The world was dim and blurry and for a moment Jack almost panicked, because he'd never had his brain dissolved quite this way before, but he was always _normal_ when he came back and if this time was —

No. They'd stripped off his clothes, dowsed him with biocide and put a plastic tent over him where he lay. That was all. Understandable precautions, for death by virus.

Still coughing, he pulled his way to his feet and shouldered through the slit in the tent.

Two men wearing gas masks stared back at him.

"That's always a good look," Jack said, forcing himself to smile. "But I don't think you need those anymore."

"Welcome back, Captain Harkness," said the man on the right. Despite the weird wheeze of the mask, Jack managed to put the voice together with the eyes: Dr. Singh, Torchwood One Assistant Director of Research.

"We'll wear them through the debriefing, if you don't mind," said Singh, polite but firm. "If you fail to show signs of succumbing to the virus a second time, the area should be safe."

"You were out for a while," said the other man. "I'm Halifax. Security Division."

"Nice to meet you," said Jack. He put his hands on his hips. Behind their masks, he guessed that the two men might be getting nervous over the fact that he wasn't nervous. Jack didn't mind being naked, of course, although the being covered in disinfectant part was uncomfortable. Itchy, even.

"I'll get right down to it," said Halifax. "Hopkins called us in. The computer in the back room with all the medical data's gone missing. He says you were the only one to know this location."

Jack made his face go stiff for a second, then let it melt back with a faint smile.

"Maybe Alex's right. But what's my motive? He could have hidden his own computer, to keep it away from Torchwood in case he needed leverage. The guy didn't play well with others. In fact—" Jack stabbed a finger at Halifax and won a momentary flinch of the eyes "—he was a fucking psychopath. What were you people thinking?"

Dr. Singh raised a single hand in a curt gesture of conciliation. "I apologise on behalf of security. However, the former hands-off policy is immaterial now. My division will be taking over."

"And what's that look like?" demanded Jack.

"You know what the stakes are, Captain Harkness. Very high indeed. But promises of miracle cures abound these days. We will internalise the affair, and investigate _slowly_. The animal host is en route to London. We'll have Mrs. Wiggens listed as an organ donor and conduct a full autopsy as soon as she expires of natural causes. Which, in any case, is likely to be very soon."

"Good luck with the research," said Jack. "It's a terrible disease."

"Torchwood Three needs to work on recovering the missing data," said Dr. Singh. "We were monitoring one of his lines of communication with his backers. He mentioned the possibility of another subject. Another host. He intended to move on an extraction with her."

"That's all you had?"

"Nothing more specific, I'm afraid."

"If we get more out of the thing in the animal, if it's not completely mad and poisonous, _we_ might be moving on the subject," said Halifax. "Would you have a problem co-ordinating that?"

Dr. Singh's turn to flinch. He was doing a fairly good job hiding how much he loathed Halifax.

"No," said Jack. "And I'm insulted you'd even ask that, honestly. What the hell is your exact position, anyway? Are you directly under Yvonne, or just some kind of glorified pig scrubber? Why don't you call MI5 and ask them if I'd _have a problem_ with —"

"I think that's enough for the debriefing," interrupted Dr. Singh, unbuckling his gas mask. Condensed moisture from his breath clung to his craggy face, and he wiped it off with his shirt sleeve. "We'll follow up with you from London, Captain Harkness. Get some sleep, or — whatever you do. There are clothes for you on the table and a driver waiting for you outside. Thank you for your work."

Jack walked into the late morning sun on the street in Llandaff North, skin crawling, desperate for a shower. His anger, unreal, melted away. The only thing left was fear.

The _subject_.

He scratched at his neck hard enough to draw a little blood.

~~~

Jack's flat had come pre-furnished in an assortment of blocky beige. Showroom bland, and he'd never bothered decorating, never even unpacked the single box of rugs and hangings from his old flat. He'd bought the place for the bathroom, really. It was all dark wood and gleaming white tile and satin nickel, centred around a monstrous claw-foot tub with double criss-crossed showerheads that pummelled his shoulders and chest like a pair of divine fists.

He groaned, collapsed to the bottom of the tub and sloshed back and forth in warm soapy ecstasy.

Putting on real clothes, his _own_ clothes, running his fingers over the fine crisp cotton, was almost as blissful.

He'd have to recover his coat from the hospital. Get it cleaned. He threw on a grey waistcoat for Estelle's party, instead. He hadn't forgotten his errand.

Alex let himself in the back door.

"Thanks for knocking," said Jack. "Oh, and thanks for trusting me, too. How could I have stolen that computer? I was dead, you know."

"You'll get over it," said Alex. He rolled his eyes. The gesture was methodical, mathematical, hitting all four corners of the wall that Alex faced.

"What do you want?" asked Jack, his voice cold and flat.

"Just came to drop off some things you left in the Aston Martin," said Alex. He left the paper bag on Jack's coffee table and turned to leave. "And I've got you a rental car. I need you back on the job later tonight. At the Hub. Ten o'clock."

"Yeah," said Jack, at Alex's back. He stifled his impulse to turn around and look directly at the bugs that Alex had indicated. Fuck it, he'd just get a new flat. He'd miss the bathroom, though.

The bag held a bottle of expensive cologne and a CD called "The Gold Experience" left over from the car's previous owner. Rental car keys and old maps and a box of Webley cartridges. And a sachet of potpourri wrapped in cellophane, very new. Jack waited a few minutes, looked at the clock, then took the whole bag with him as he walked out the door.

He froze in place on the threshold, his fingers still curled around the doorknob. He thought suddenly of full lives and half lives, and growing old, and moving slowly, and walking closer to the earth. And children. There were three. The mad thing writhing in the pig brain. The frozen thing Alex would have stored in the vaults by now, maybe alongside the missing computer. And the child he was heading out to kill, with the blessing of its parent... Or its own self. Easier to think of it that way. It was a hard bargain they'd made.

He'd held the doorknob so long, it was as warm as his hand. He'd forgotten why he'd stopped in the first place.

He let it slip away and walked down the stairs, swinging the bag and humming "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World." Looking forward to teatime, and sunlight on wildflowers.


	7. The Ruins

_The waves would wear themselves dry. He would know all the names and laws of things. All the ones that left in ships, their bones would wash back to him and he would hold them forever._

 _He turned and walked away from the sea. Walked for hours through Cardiff, passing bomb sites where the upturned earth, unfrozen, crawled with new green tangles of life. Black and green and the sky a deepening bruised purple._

 _She was waiting for him. In a cheerful little flat in a sad grey building by a grove of trees. She wouldn't wait forever. The money he'd paid the landlord would run out, and she'd leave, go back to her parents maybe, grieve him, grow away from him, live another life. A good life._

 _He sensed he was constructing a monument to his own nobility and at that second the worms of self-loathing began to gnaw away at the foundation. Open himself to the risk she'd leave him, abandon him, after she understood the thing he was becoming? Better to put her aside, first._

 _He ground the heel of his boot into the wet earth and stared up at the sky._

~~~

Tiers of cucumber sandwiches precariously stacked in his arms, Jack strolled up the garden path. The foxgloves were nodding a little heavier, he noticed.

A trio of young people, young enough to be students from the university, opened the door for him and flitted away with the trays. Inside, Estelle's house was clean and warm and filled with the quiet buzz of several generations of earnest eccentrics. Jack smiled at the sight. In the past, he'd worried that Estelle would grow lonelier — two husbands, but never any children — and seeing her surrounded by care let him set that worry aside.

There she was, pouring a cup of tea for an elderly bald man in shockingly stereotypical leather-elbowed tweed.

"Hey there," said Jack, leaning up against the kitchen counter. "You can start the party now. I dropped off the caviar and cocaine by the punch bowl."

"Oh dear," said Estelle, with a shake of her head and a beaming smile. She turned aside. "Don't mind Jack, he's an awful fooler."

"Ah-hrrm-hmm," grunted the man as he stared into his teacup.

"Cucumber sandwiches," confessed Jack. "Vegetarian. Did they have to be vegan? I think they've got mayonnaise."

"No, they're wonderful, and thank you so very much. We've got lots and lots of food now. And I promise I'll have your banana bread tomorrow."

"Not with your arm like that. Take your time."

"But it's just a graze."

"Hey, I brought you a present. Let me know if you like it, and I'll get you a bigger bag." Jack produced the sachet from his pocket and carefully unwrapped the cellophane. He held it up to Estelle, standing straight now, and very still.

She leaned over and sniffed it.

"It's lovely, but a touch too... perfumey. I'm much fonder of the ones that are pure lavender, you know. I'm sorry. But it's perfect for the guest bathroom."

"That's all right," said Jack. "Just a spur of the moment thing." He put it on the counter.

"I must introduce you to Hamish. He was one of the first volunteers for the tutoring program. He's had the most fascinating life. He wrote a book about lemurs!"

"Ahhrm," said Hamish, still staring into his cup.

Estelle could always find something interesting about _anyone_. But even her brand of contagious enthusiasm wasn't enough to spark a real three-sided conversation. Luckily, one of the students wandered over after a few minutes, the topic changed to immigration policy and the morose Hamish faded towards the patio.

Jack watched Estelle closely all the while, but there was no change that he could see.

The spores would have carried their message by now. The nanosurgeon's progeny would leave the house in order, sweeping the dust out of corners as it shut itself down. Pruning itself back to the last protein tangle, then fading away.

Jack had made a promise. A year, with her memories still sharp, and they'd send the frozen form of the parent back through the Rift with a beacon.

The only doubt he had left was Alex. Did he really believe Jack that there was no cure, just a freak chance that could save one woman... And one woman only? Maybe he was just waiting to see if the cure worked before sending the tiny vial of dust on to Torchwood One.

And Jack couldn't let that happen to the timeline. He also couldn't expect anyone without a grasp of time travel ethics to not be horrified at that. He trusted Alex more than ever after last night, but he was a man with parents, no doubt.

He'd worry about that another day. Myrna was walking up the garden path. He excused himself and went out to meet her.

She was dressed starkly today, black jumper and long grey skirt, but still looking very trim.

He thought about a breezy _sweetie darling_. Decided against it.

"I've got some bad news. Pinkie's in the hospital." He reached for her hands, and she rested them in his. Her eyes blinked wildly.

"Oh God, it's not... I knew she was —"

"Someone took her from Wellcross. A man. He dropped her off by the side of the road, and someone hit her with a car. Or maybe he hit her. The police tracked him down to an abandoned restaurant, but he killed himself before they arrested him. I just got the full story this morning and I knew I had to tell you right away. I know it's hard news to take and I'm sorry."

"I have to go there. Don't tell Estelle yet. Or maybe you should. I don't know. I don't know anymore."

"I'll work it out. Go."

She turned. The fingers of her left hand trailed against his open palm, and stayed their course.

"Would you —"

"Come by the hotel later? I'd love to," said Jack, smiling.

She walked away, shoulders held straight, and he stayed there for a while after her silhouette disappeared from view, soaking up the sun and watching the flowers wave in the summer breeze.

At a certain point in life he imagined that the pleasure would fade from the movements of sex, and become something more slow, abstract, spread out over the surface of the body. Living more in sun-warmed skin, or the feel of soft sheets. He was fairly sure Estelle had reached that point. The thought was neither particularly appealing nor horrifying. He wondered if it would ever happen to him.

He stopped by the patio table and ate some cucumber sandwiches.

"These — _mmph_ — are _delicious_ ," Jack told the other man at the table. "Had some yet?"

He was another bald elderly man like Hamish, but with black-indigo skin and a tiny wisp of grey beard.

"Many! I was unfamiliar with the concept, but I have been won over," he said, in a vaguely middle European accent that Jack couldn't quite place.

They introduced themselves. Manyok was a visiting professor, and Jack played the part of the fellow foreigner, something he always enjoyed.

"I find the people in Wales are very hospitable," noted Manyok. "I was on a research trip in Italy before this, and my reception was, as they say, _mezzo mezzo_. Still, it was my lifelong dream to see the Colosseum in Rome, and that was worth everything."

"I know what you mean," said Jack, stuffing down another cucumber sandwich. "It's an amazing achievement."

"So amazing that in the Middle Ages, there was a legend that fairies built it," said Manyok. "They forgot that their parents times twenty could ever have done such a thing. They said that fairies built a castle all in one magic night, but when the cock crowed, they left off early, and so it never had a roof."

"Shoddy construction. Typical fairies, I guess."

"How could they have forgotten! This is what fascinates me."

A question that didn't hold any interest for Jack. He stayed uncharacteristically quiet, and stared off into the house, catching glimpses of Estelle through the glass door as she moved back and forth, her face animated with compassion, her eyes alive with wonder at learning everything she could in the years that she had left.

Manyok shifted in his seat. Jack realised that even by academic standards he was being ungracious.

"Hey, drifted off there for a bit. I had a long night. You're into classical history? Let me tell you something I heard about Pompeii, around the time Mount Vesuvius erupted..."

Jack paused, tying some threads together and cutting off others, and then began his story.

~~~

 _He ground the heel of his boot into the wet earth and stared up at the sky._

 _The ruins were falling down all around him._

 _But this was their time._

 _He walked on, faster and faster until he was almost running, running to make her door by nightfall and the blackout. She wouldn't wait forever but now, now, she would be waiting with her light. And she was._

~~~

THE END


End file.
